"A Chinese aided by his wife flogged his mother. The imperial order not only commanded that the criminals should be put to death; it further directed that the head of the clan should be put to death; that the immediate neighbors each receive eighty blows and be sent into exile; that the head or representatives of the graduates of the first degree (or B.A.) among whom the male offender ranked should be flogged and exiled; that the granduncle, the uncle, and two elder brothers should be put to death; that the prefect and the rulers should for a time be deprived of their rank; that on the face of the mother of the female offender four Chinese characters expressive of neglect of duty towards her daughter should be tattooed, and that she be exiled to a distant province; that the father of the female offender, a bachelor of arts, should not be allowed to take any higher literary degrees, and that he be flogged and exiled; that the son of the offenders should receive another name, and that the lands of the offender for a time remain fallow." (J. H. GRAY, _China_, Vol. I., pp. 237 f.) Put beside this the story of Achan: Achan had taken for his own possession certain articles from the spoil of Jericho which had been set apart or "devoted" to Jehovah. Israel then suffered a defeat in battle. When Achan's act became known, "Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of Zerah, and the mantle, and the wedge of gold, and his sons and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had.... And all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire and stoned them with stones." (JOSHUA vii: 24, 25.) The converse of these situations is brought out in the regulations of the Kumi, a Japanese local institution comprising five or more households: "As members of a Kumi we will cultivate friendly feelings even more than with our relatives, and will promote each other's happiness as well as share each other's grief. If there is an unprincipled or lawless person in a Kumi, we shall all share the responsibility for him." (SIMMONS and WIGMORE, _Transactions, Asiatic Society of Japan_, xix., 177 f.) For another aspect of the group take Cæsar's description of landholding among the Germans: "No one possesses privately a definite extent of land; no one has limited fields of his own; but every year the magistrates and chiefs distribute the land to the clans and the kindred groups (_gentibus cognationibusque hominum_) and to those (_other_ groups) who live together." (_De Bell. Gall._, VI., 22.)